The Restaurant PDF Download

Winner of the Louis Gottschalk Prize Winner of the Thomas J. Wilson Memorial Prize “Witty and full of fascinating details.” —Los Angeles Times Why are there restaurants? Why would anybody consider eating alongside perfect strangers in a loud and crowded room to be an enjoyable pastime? To find the answer, Rebecca Spang takes us back to France in the eighteenth century, when a restaurant was not a place to eat but a quasi-medicinal bouillon not unlike the bone broths of today. This is a book about the French revolution in taste—about how Parisians invented the modern culture of food, changing the social life of the world in the process. We see how over the course of the Revolution, restaurants that had begun as purveyors of health food became symbols of aristocratic greed. In the early nineteenth century, the new genre of gastronomic literature worked within the strictures of the Napoleonic state to transform restaurants yet again, this time conferring star status upon oysters and champagne. “An ambitious, thought-changing book...Rich in weird data, unsung heroes, and bizarre true stories.” —Adam Gopnik, New Yorker “[A] pleasingly spiced history of the restaurant.” —New York Times “A lively, engrossing, authoritative account of how the restaurant as we know it developed...Spang is...as generous in her helpings of historical detail as any glutton could wish.” —The Times

ISBN10 : 9780674244016 , ISBN13 : 067424401X

Page Number : 353

AS READ ON BBC RADIO 4 BOOK OF THE WEEK. The fascinating story of how we have gone out to eat, from the ancient Romans in Pompeii to the luxurious Michelin-starred restaurants of today. Tracing its earliest incarnations in the city of Pompeii, where Sitwell is stunned by the sophistication of the dining scene, this is a romp through history as we meet the characters and discover the events that shape the way we eat today. Sitwell, restaurant critic for the Daily Telegraph and famous for his acerbic criticisms on the hit BBC show MasterChef, tackles this enormous subject with his typical wit and precision. He spies influences from an ancient traveller of the Muslim world, revels in the unintended consequences for nascent fine dining of the French Revolution, reveals in full hideous glory the post-Second World War dining scene in the UK and fathoms the birth of sensitive gastronomy in the US counterculture of the 1960s. This is a story of the ingenuity of the human race as individuals endeavour to do that most fundamental of things: to feed people. It is a story of art, politics, revolution, desperate need and decadent pleasure. Sitwell, a familiar face in the UK and a figure known for the controversy he attracts, provides anyone who loves to dine out, or who loves history, or who simply loves a good read with an accessible and humorous history. The Restaurant is jam-packed with extraordinary facts; a book to read eagerly from start to finish or to spend glorious moments dipping in to. It may be William Sitwell’s History of Eating Out, but it’s also the definitive story of one of the cornerstones of our culture.

ISBN10 : 9781471179631 , ISBN13 : 147117963X

Page Number : 400

Three sisters. An inherited Nantucket restaurant. One year before they can sell. Jill lives a glamorous life in Manhattan as a co-owner of a successful executive search firm. Never married, she is in her mid-thirties and lives in a stunning, corner condo with breathtaking views of the city and Hudson river. Everyone thinks there's something going on with her partner, Billy, because as a workaholic, she spends more time with him than anyone else. There never has been, but Jill is starting to wonder if there could be. Emma lives in Arizona and is an elementary school teacher and an aspiring photographer. She met her college professor husband, Peter, in grad school and they've been married for fifteen years. In recent years, she's noticed that Peter has grown distant. But when he shares a surprising secret, she doesn't see it coming and her world is turned upside down. Mandy has two children and is married to her college sweetheart, Cory, who runs a wildly successful hedge fund from Nantucket. Now that the children are older, Mandy has more free time and is eager to do more than just volunteer with local charity events. But Cory doesn't want her to work. He thinks it doesn't reflect well on him and appearances are everything to Cory. Though when Mandy finds something unusual in his gym bag, she begins to question what is really going on. The girls are stunned when they learn about the restaurant, Mimi's Place and the condition their grandmother added to the will, leaving the restaurant equally to Mandy, Emma, and Jill--and also to Paul, the chef for the past twelve years, and Emma’s first love.

ISBN10 : , ISBN13 :

Page Number : 213

"Have you ever wondered where the first coffee shop sprung up, or when the sushi conveyor belt was invented? Unbelievably, the global history of the dining establishment has never been told--until now. Journeying 2,000 years into the past, acclaimed food critic and writer William Sitwell artfully traces the earliest origins of the widespread cultural practice of eating out, from its most basic to most sophisticated forms. Whether he's traversing the inns and taverns of Pompeii before its destruction in A.D. 79, witnessing the tumultuous emergence of fine dining during the French Revolution, or recounting the mid-twentieth-century invention of the taco machine in New York City, Sitwell's engaging prose gives readers a front-row seat to the restaurant experience across cultures and millennia. He identifies the ten most influential restaurant dishes of all time and follows the fashions that shape the way we dine, meeting the restaurateurs of today and yesterday whose establishments shaped society for good or ill. And after offering a wry history of the world through the prism of the eatery, he ponders its exciting future. Chefs, critics, restauranteurs, and foodies alike will delight in all the sweet and savory details offered up in this lively and highly absorbing romp through social and culinary history, packed with color photographs and illustrations."--Amazon.com

ISBN10 : 163576596X , ISBN13 : 9781635765960

Page Number : 0

What does eating out tell us about who we are? The restaurant is where we go to celebrate, to experience pleasure, to show off - or, sometimes, just because we're hungry. But these temples of gastronomy hide countless stories. This is the tale of the restaurant in all its guises, from the first formal establishments in eighteenth-century Paris serving 'restorative' bouillon, to today's new Nordic cuisine, via grand Viennese cafés and humble fast food joints. Here are tales of cooks who spend hours arranging rose petals for Michelin stars, of the university that teaches the consistence of the perfect shake, of the lunch counter that sparked a protest movement, of the writers - from Proust to George Orwell - who have been inspired or outraged by the restaurant's secrets. As this dazzlingly entertaining, eye-opening book shows, the restaurant is where performance, fashion, commerce, ritual, class, work and desire all come together. Through its windows, we can glimpse the world. Christoph Ribbat (b. 1968) has taught in Bochum, Boston and Basel, and is now Professor of American Studies at the University of Paderborn.

ISBN10 : 9781782273103 , ISBN13 : 1782273107

Page Number : 163

During the 1760s and 1770s, those who were sensitive and supposedly suffering made public show of their delicacy by going to the new establishments known as "restaurateurs' rooms" and sipping their bouillons there. However, the restaurants that had begun as purveyors of health food soon became sites for extending frugal, politically correct hospitality and later became symbols of aristocratic greed. From restoratives to Restoration, Spang establishes the restaurant at the very intersection of public and private in French culture--the first public place where people went to be private.

ISBN10 : 9780674919143 , ISBN13 : 0674919149

Page Number : 232

ISBN10 : 0882442708 , ISBN13 : 9780882442709

Page Number : 308